]]>When people talk about Johnson and Johnson’s new San Diego incubator, Janssen Labs, they can’t help but be a little bit skeptical about the fact that J&J isn’t taking any options or first-rights to compounds developed by its incubator tenants. “What’s the catch?” everyone keeps asking. “What does J&J get out of the deal?”

I’m guessing J&J execs asked that same question when Diego Miralles, J&J West Coast site head, pitched them on his idea for a no-strings-attached incubator business model. And I’m guessing his answer was something along the lines of “well we’ve got all this expensive equipment and extra lab space anyway, so why not make a little rent money and support innovation and, while we’re at it, get ourselves in the loop with local start-ups who might one day reward our kindness with preference in licensing deals.”

Something like that, anyway.

J&J is a public company with a fiduciary duty to its shareholders, so I’m sure it’s getting some benefit out of this incubator. But the biggest benefit, according to Miralles, is supporting innovation. “A healthy biotech sector is critical to our future. We believe the tide will rise for all ships, and we will all benefit,” he told BioWorld Today back in October when we first wrote about the incubator, which launched last week.

For years VCs and start-ups have been warning that if the industry doesn’t find a way to support innovation, there won’t be any more candidates for big pharma to in-license. It seems J&J is heeding that warning.

I wonder if other pharmas will follow suit. Maybe it will be like when Warren Buffett said he’d match any voluntary contributions Republican congressmen make to pay down the deficit – the deficit is a problem for all of us, so he’s challenging the politicians to step up to the plate and help fix it. Maybe other big pharmas will see that J&J is trying to address the early stage funding gap and they’ll rise to the challenge as well. One can hope . . .

]]>http://www.bioworld.com/perspectives/2012/01/19/like-warren-buffett-jj-throws-down-incubator-gauntlet-who%e2%80%99s-next/feed/0San Diego Scene: Sanford-Burnham Queuing Up Behind J&J to Launch Incubatorhttp://www.bioworld.com/perspectives/2012/01/19/san-diego-scene-sanford-burnham-queuing-up-behind-jj-to-launch-incubator/
http://www.bioworld.com/perspectives/2012/01/19/san-diego-scene-sanford-burnham-queuing-up-behind-jj-to-launch-incubator/#commentsThu, 19 Jan 2012 22:11:19 +0000Trista Morrisonhttp://www.bioworld.com/perspectives/?p=739The San Diego biotech industry has been buzzing this week with the grand opening of Johnson and Johnson’s new incubator, Janssen Labs. But already plans for another San Diego incubator are being laid, this time at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research...

Paul Laikind, Sanford-Burnham’schief business officer, told BioWorld Today the facility will house six start-ups in an open-lab format similar to the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). Companies will have access to lab space and can use Sanford-Burnham’s 33 core facilities in animal care, high throughput screening, metabolomics or other areas on a pay-as-you-go basis, Laikind said.

Unlike J&J’s incubator, however, Sanford-Burnham’s will not be open to all comers – it is specifically for companies based on technology spun out of either Sanford-Burnham or the University of California, San Diego. Laikind explained that while the incubator will charge its tenants rent, the goal is not to be a profit center, but rather to cover costs and give young spin-outs a leg-up in the current difficult funding environment.

J&J and the Sanford-Burnham incubators will join the San Diego Science Center, run by life science real estate specialist BioMed Realty. The facility has over 100,000 square feet of rentable lab and office space, as well as a vivarium and operations staff to handle glass wash and such.

Pfizer Inc. also once had an incubator in its La Jolla, Calif., research site, but the big pharma was criticized for controlling too much of its tenants’ fates through options and other clauses. The program is no longer active.